Module POC3106 for 2018/9
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
POC3106: Biopolitics of Security
This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.
Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.
Module Aims
The module aims to enable you to develop a critical understanding of contemporary security events, formulate new research insights and understand issues of International Relations, Security and Migration studies through a biopolitical lens. The module will help you to understand the techniques and rationales used by the nation-states to decide who shall live and who shall die, who shall be counted and who should be disappeared out of sight, and how to make such management acceptable to public morality and reason. The module will also prepare you for academic and other careers in the field of critical theory and security studies.
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. Understand and explain, in-depth, contemporary and emerging challenges to security. 2. Demonstrate a critical and reflexive approach in assessing academic and policy debates on security |
| Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Show awareness of key perspectives and debates in Biopolitics and their interface with critical theory. 4. Apply Foucauldian methodology, abstract theoretical perspectives to actual events of security. |
| Personal and Key Skills | 5. Develop critical arguments and offering alternative means of thinking. 6. Construct a reasoned and logical argument supported by evidence. 7. Work independently within a limited timeframe to complete a specified task |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
Introduction to Biopolitics.
- Governmentality: Understanding the ‘conduct of conduct.’
- Creating Bare Life and States of Exception: Understanding life reduced to nakedness.
- Regulating Death.
- Surveillance and Control: Understanding how societies are governed and regulated.
- Resistance to Biopolitics.
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 22 | 11x 2 hour seminars |
| Guided Independent Study | 50 | Seminar preparation through directed reading |
| Guided Independent Study | 6 | To complete the formative essay plan |
| Guided independent study | 24 | To complete the review essay |
| Guided independent study | 48 | To complete the critical research paper. |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Basic reading:
Foucault, M., 1984. The Foucault reader. Pantheon. (Selections: "The Body of the Condemned", ‘"Docile Bodies", "Panopticism").
Foucault, Michel. "Essential Works of Foucault 1954-84. Vol. 3: Power." (1994). (Selections: “Governmentality”).
Scott, David. "Colonial governmentality." Social text 43 (1995): 191-220.
Basaran, Tugba. "The saved and the drowned: Governing indifference in the name of security." Security Dialogue 46, no. 3 (2015): 205-220.
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford University Press, 1998. (Selections)
Agamben, Giorgio. State of exception. Vol. 2. University of Chicago Press, 2005. (Selections)
Butler, Judith. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. Verso, 2006. (Selections)
Ticktin, Miriam. "Policing and humanitarianism in France: immigration and the turn to law as state of exception." Interventions 7, no. 3 (2005): 346-368.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. "Bare life: border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 4 (2011): 599-612.
Films
Modern Times. Directed by Charlie Chaplin (1936)
Lemon Tree. Directed by Eran Riklis (2008)
The Battle of Algiers. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1965)
The Architecture of Violence. Directed by Ana Naomi de Sousa (2014)
